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Sylvia Bullock and Marcus Bullock

In the mid-1990s, Reverend Sylvia Bullock was raising two kids on her own near Washington, D.C. while working and going to college full-time.

Her teenage son, Marcus, saw how hard his mother was working — and how little they had — and decided to take matters into his own hands. He and a friend committed a carjacking, and although he was 15 years old, Marcus was tried as an adult. He served eight years for the crime.

Marcus was released in 2004. Since then he has created an app, called Flikshop, that makes it easier for inmates and their families to stay in touch. His mom works for his tech company as Fulfillment Manager and Mom-In-Chief. She received her Doctor of Ministry in 2008.

Originally aired August 11, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top photo: Marcus and Sylvia in 2017.Bottom photo: A Polaroid from one of Sylvia’s visits to Marcus while he was in prison. Courtesy of Sylvia Bullock.

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Transcript

MB: That long road trip on that prison bus, it was like three or four hours. The whole time, I’m mentally preparing myself for warfare.

SB: Survival.

MB: Yeah.

MB: How did you cope with being a minister with a son in prison?

SB: You know, here you are trying to help everybody else, and you can’t even minister to your own. Because I felt like, ’What could I have done differently? Um, how did I not see it?’

MB: I think that you did everything that you possibly could. You kept me in church Monday through Sunday.

SB: Ok, well —

MB: [laughs]

SB: — being in church and being engaged with what you’re doing there is two different things.

MB: What was life like at home while I was gone?

SB: Well, initially it was a real sense of feeling alone. And I stop cooking dinner. But what kept me truly alive and focused was being able to write you.

MB: The letters were everything. The way that you wrote six-, seven-, eight-page letters to me…I would picture you writing and how your hands would be moving across the paper. You were really baring your soul to me. Before then, it was always like, ’Hey, I’m your mom. Go put shoes on. Hurry up, Let’s go to church.’

SB: I remember, you know, talking to the wardens —

MB: — You was such a mom —

SB: [laughs]

MB: — What mother calls to the prison and talks to the warden?

SB: [laughs]

MB: — like, this is not a guidance counselor in college —

SB: —[laughs] I was like, I need to talk to the warden, and you need to know that my son is here, he’s only 15.

MB: You became less of my authority figure mom and became more of my caring and concerned mom. That’s what kept me alive. Because a year out here is not the same thing as a year in there. A year in there is just the same day, every day, over and over and over again. And, and because they send me to these prisons where people had so much more time than I had to serve, in my mind I’m like, ’I got eight years, oh my gosh, what am I going to do.’ But in their mind they’re like, ’I potentially may die in prison. You’re going to go home one day. Why are you acting like you have my kind of time? You don’t have my kind of time, Marcus. Do your eight years, go home, and make us proud. Like, if you can’t make it out there, than none of us can make it.’

MB: So when you look at me today, what do you see?

SB: I see a young man who said that, ’I’m going to change the world.’ I see a man who loves his children, and his wife. And I am thankful that you have grown up to be the person that you are today.

MB: I’m honored to be able to say that I had that direction from you, and you being that mom in my life so —